Highlights of launch preparations to liftoff and weightlessness. ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, Russian Soyuz commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome on 28 May 2013. All three will be part of the Station’s Expedition 36/37 crew.

Luca’s mission is named ‘Volare’ – ‘to fly’ in Italian – to symbolise the search for new frontiers and opportunities for discovery. The spacecraft lifted off from Baikonur spaceport at 20:31:24 GMT and reached orbit nine minutes later. In under six hours while orbiting Earth four times the Soyuz docked with the Rassvet module on the International Space Station.